What are Reports?

Because Site Explorer is getting so feature rich, it seems some users don’t realize that this is just the top level data and that we have much deeper link reports. Here is a typical support question:

I just signed up for a monthly plan. I’m not quite sure what the limit for reports is. What is a “Detailed Report per Month”? Is that each time I click “Create a Report”? Or, is it whenever I enter a URL in Site-explorer to check? Or, does each time I click a tab like “Anchor Text” and “Ref Domains” count as a report?

No! You can click on “Anchor Text” tabs and “New Links” without fear in Site Explorer. The only restrictions here are throttle based. If you look at too many Url or domain lookups in a given hour, then you would see a screen saying that you had reached your (hourly) limit. Since you can check 30 domains every hour on silver, this should suffice an individual user. This increases to 250 domains an hour for Platinum users.

But this is not a “Report”. Reports go deeper, giving you more back-links than we give on Site Explorer. We have two main report types “Standard Reports and “Advanced Reports”. Whilst – on a silver subscription – we show 2,500 links in Site Explorer, we show 7,500 in a standard report and all of the links if you have enough resource left in your account in an advanced report.

Here is how it breaks down as of October 2012:

Subscription

Free

Silver

Gold

Platinum

Site Explorer

Not Available

2500 links

5000 links

10000 links

Standard report

Not Available

7500 links

15000

20000

Advanced Report

All links for your own site*

All links of your own* + up to 1 Million other links

All links of your own* + up to 5 Million other links

All links of your own* + up to 20 Million other links

Reports per month

60 + your own

300 + your own

950 + your own

* Add a verification file to get your own site data without charge

What does x million other links mean?

If you request an advanced report, we have to process every link we have for a website (whether you ultimately need them or not). So if you are analyzing CNN.com then we just cannot give you all these links within a silver package. This is why we give you Standard reports that return the top (strongest) links and also a way to see all your own site’s links for free. For this reason, advanced users or users analyzing large websites will benefit from higher subscription levels but those analyzing mostly smaller website will not see any significant advantage increasing past a silver subscription.

Are there advantages in generating reports over using Site Explorer?

Yes. here are several:

Standard reports have very quick filters, allowing you to slice and dice the data on the fly by anchor text, URL syntax, URL strength, flag type etc

Both reports provide a static point in time. They only get updated when you request the data to be refreshed. Site Explorer changes all the time.

You see more links. Lots more!

Advanced reports allow advanced filters, giving you the chance to slice and dice the entire backlink profile in any way you see fit, including or excluding deleted links, sorting by dates, by country or word in the link page’s IP range or many other options.

We do not charge a user more than once per period per report on the web interface, even if you force your data to be refreshed every day. (Usage fees do apply when you use your data allowances through any form of API.)

I didn’t even know “Reports” existed..

Ah – well we obviously didn’t want to blow your minds on day one -Seriously, have a look at this video to help you get to grips with our reports:

Currently on the plans and pricing page, https://www.majesticseo.com/plans-pricing, platinum subscriptions have 100 million analysable backlinks (for advanced reports), and 20 million API retrieval units. This article seems to suggest that the new limit of analysable backlinks for advanced reports will be reduced to 20 million. Can you please clarify this?

Hey Alex,
Analyzable Units and Retrieval units are (frustratingly) different. The comannds that tell you how many links a URL has and what types (The link count commands – in particular “GetIndexItemInfo” in the API is something you could call 100,000,000 times a month. Domainers use this command lots to compare large numbers of domains quickly. However, when you start bringing back the ACTUAL LINKS (with all the data therein, such as anchor text of the link, etc) then THIS needs to drill in to that analysis and THIS is what us (and always has been) 20,000,000 a month. In short – we have not reduced the limits! It s just that we have noticed people not using the reports functions because they think that Ste Explorer IS our offering, so we wanted to highlight that you can drill deeper than just Site Explorer via reports.